The New Wifestyle Profiles | Audrey

hip hip hoooray! it’s time for another feature of another fabulous woman! i’m pleased to introduce you to audrey. both her and her husband are big dreamers and have also started a company together that has helped the music/band industry in big ways! audrey also has a dream to start up an animal shelter, which i love. she’s describes her wifestyle as founded in a balance of self-reliance and interdependency. read on for more and show her some love!

Hello Wifestylers!

My name is Audrey Louise and I blog over at Life as Louise! I’m so excited to share with you on Chelsea’s blog today! My husband Kyle and I live in a small Ohio town and share our home, bed, and food with two awesome dogs, Lylee & Enzo! Kyle is an entrepreneur, drummer, and expert chili chef. I am a Harry Potter fanatic, scrapbooker, and animal enthusiast with a love for ‘40s music. We have been married for two years and I’m still trying to convince Kyle that traveling is fun and clothes belong in the closet or in the hamper, not on the floor. I’m so tickled to share my favorite story (OURS!) with you!

When I contacted Chelsea about a wifestyle profile I assumed the words would just come to me and I’d eloquently describe the love and respect my husband and I hold for one another. Apparently this week my brain is on a writer’s strike because I struggled. I read through other profiles and felt humbled by the amazing women who have shared their wifestyles. Humbled, but even less confident in my own profile.

I met my husband when I was 15. We started dating when I was 17. I was engaged at 21 and married at the age of 23. We’ve had hardships and bumps in the road, but things have gone very well for us over the last eight years.

Kyle and I met through music and our relationship was strengthened by this common interest. I met Kyle because I joined high school band. We bonded over the pageantry arts. When I graduated high school I went on to teach band students for a while, just as Kyle had, and I joined the competitive percussion ensemble, Matrix.

“Anything’s possible if you’ve only got enough nerve.” –JK Rowling

In 2012 Kyle made a decision to stop teaching music. My husband can’t “do nothing” so that summer he came up with the idea to fabricate and sell custom field carts & racks. He had built his own equipment while he was teaching and he knew what musicians & band directors needed.

(If you’ve ever seen a marching band on a field- high school, college, drum corps.- you’ve seen them push out speakers and synthesizers and gongs on steel carts. My husband makes those carts.)

We started small. Kyle kept his fulltime job and designed carts on the side. Kyle, his best friend, and his father dedicated evening hours to building, welding, and assembling custom carts. Weekends were spent in my family’s spare garage, building a company. We sacrificed time and energy but the payoff has been great. This past August Kyle was able to quit his job and work for our company fulltime. He still dedicates evening hours and weekends to the business, and his carts are used nationwide.

Last weekend we went to a wedding for mutual friends (who we just happened to meet through the music world). We were sitting at a table with two couples and when we introduced ourselves one of the guys said, “Oh you’re the cart guy that Andy (the groom) always talks about. You do great work.” I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more happiness and pride for my husband than when he smiled and confirmed that he is, indeed, the cart guy.

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” –Malcom S. Forbes

We have more in common than music, of course. In addition to his humor and honesty my favorite thing about Kyle is his compassion for animals. While he’s busy building musical equipment I work on my own plans to open and operate a dog shelter.

We have a passion for rescuing and protecting stray and shelter animals. Over the course of our relationship we have taken in multiple dogs and cats. Sometimes those critters stay with use and sometimes we find them a loving home. I’d love to start fostering pets, but my husband says he’ll get attached and won’t be able to give them back. (I don’t see anything wrong with that but he’s very strict about our two dog maximum right now.)

Someday I plan to open my own shelter- an atmosphere that is very comfortable and safe for a dog before he or she moves on to their forever home. I’d like to help rehabilitate behavioral problems in the dogs to make them more adoptable. I’d like to create an environment that isn’t just chain links fences and concrete floors. I want to build a hybrid shelter-dog park that’s open to the public for recreation and volunteering.

The details are still being worked out, but if your dreams don’t scare you they’re not big enough, right?

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.” –Mahatma Gandhi

My wifestyle is founded in a balance of self-reliance and interdependency. I love that Kyle has his projects and I have mine. I love that no matter what we do that day, whether we do it together or apart, we come home to one another and unite. My husband is my ally, my coach, my lover, my inspiration, my teammate, and my pride & joy. I know that I could function without him but life is so much more enjoyable and meaningful when I am with him.

Questions:

• Do you and your significant other have big projects in the works? Do you tackle them together or work independently?
• What hobbies do you and your significant other share? Did you meet over these passions?

• If you could start your own business what would you do? Would your significant other want to be involved, too?

blog » twitter » instagram » bloglovin’